Archives for category: Betsy DeVos
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Watch Betsy DeVos and the “Silent Protest”at Harvard

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2017 //
7

Mercedes Schneider has an assignment for you.

If you have some spare time, watch the finesse with which protestors, activists, and students responded to Betsy DeVos at Harvard. They didn’t shout her down. They were not rude. She e er ksed her free speech rights. They made clear that her views are not widely shared.

Classy.

She added injury to insult by releasing millions of dollars in federal funds for charter schools in Massachusetts, despite the fact that voters overwhelmingly rejected them last fall.

Categories Betsy DeVos

Where Betsy DeVos Is Spreading Federal Funds for Charter Schools

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2017 //
31

Thanks to Leonie Haimson for assembling this information about the US ED plans to spread charter money.

US ED announces more funding for charter schools nationwide, including 5 NYC charters, & yet another $3.2M for Success which has received many millions already from the feds as well as from private sources.

https://www.ed.gov/news/press-releases/us-department-education-awards-253-million-grants-expand-charter-schools

more info here: https://innovation.ed.gov/what-we-do/charter-schools/charter-schools-program-grants-for-replications-and-expansion-of-high-quality-charter-schools/

and https://innovation.ed.gov/what-we-do/charter-schools/

Charter apps and reviewer comments here: https://innovation.ed.gov/what-we-do/charter-schools/charter-schools-program-grants-for-replications-and-expansion-of-high-quality-charter-schools/awards/

U.S. Department of Education Awards $253 Million in Grants to Expand Charter Schools

September 28, 2017

Contact: Press Office, (202) 401-1576, press@ed.gov

U.S. Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos announced that The Expanding Opportunity through Quality Charter Schools Program (Charter Schools Program or CSP) has awarded new grants this week to fund the creation and expansion of public charter schools across the nation, totaling approximately $253 million.

“These grants will help supplement state-based efforts to give students access to more options for their education,” said Secretary DeVos. “What started as a handful of schools in Minnesota has blossomed into nearly 7,000 charter schools across the country. Charter schools are now part of the fabric of American education, and I look forward to seeing how we can continue to work with states to help ensure more students can learn in an environment that works for them.”

The following grants slates were awarded:

The State Entities program awarded approximately $144.7 million in new grants to nine states.

The Replication and Expansion of High-Quality Charter Schools program awarded approximately $52.4 million in new grants to 17 non-profit charter management organizations.

The Credit Enhancement for Charter School Facilities program awarded approximately $56.25 million in new grants to six non-profit organizations and two state agencies.

These grants are awarded to state educational agencies and other state entities, charter management organizations (CMOs) and other non-profit organizations and represent the first cohort of new awards under the program’s new authorizing statute, the Every Student Succeeds Act (ESSA).

Please see below for the list of grantees, first year grant amounts and total recommended funding (contingent on future Congressional appropriations).

State Entity Grantees:

Grantee Name FY 17 Funding (Year 1 and 2 Funding) Total Recommended Funding

Indiana Department of Education $24,002,291 $59,966,575

Maryland State Department of Education $5,490,859 $17,222,222

Minnesota Department of Education $22,381,611 $45,757,406

Mississippi Charter School Authorizer Board* $4,240,819 $15,000,000

New Mexico Public Education Department $6,358,693 $22,507,805

Oklahoma Public School Resource Center, Inc.* $4,264,870 $16,499,722

Rhode Island Department of Education $1,953,000 $6,000,000

Texas Education Agency $38,034,535 $59,164,996

Wisconsin Department of Public Instruction $37,954,114 $95,777,775

Total $144,680,792 $331,896,501

* Eligible applicants under this program are state entities. A state entity is defined under ESSA as a state educational agency; a state charter school board; a Governor of a state; or a charter school support organization.

CMO Grantees:

Grantee Name State** FY17 Funding Total Recommended Funding

Ascend Learning, Inc. NY $3,661,357 $9,484,885

Brooke Charter Schools MA $353,747 $836,136

Eagle Academy Public Charter School DC $449,066 $812,885

East Harlem Tutorial Program NY $542,640 $2,781,280

Environmental Charter Schools CA $566,063 $900,000

Family Life Academy Charter Schools, Inc. NY $739,260 $900,000

Fortune School of Education CA $1,350,600 $2,043,100

Freedom Preparatory Academy, Inc. TN $1,451,301 $4,297,000

Great Oaks Foundation, Inc. NY $1,958,400 $3,834,000

Hiawatha Academies MN $1,121,400 $1,875,000

IDEA Public Schools TX $26,316,168 $67,243,986

New Paradigm for Education, Inc MI $2,365,400 $5,084,100

Rocketship Education CA $5,090,134 $12,582,678

Success Academy Charter Schools, Inc. NY $3,225,240 $6,130,200
The Freedom and Democracy Schools Foundation, Inc. MD $603,003 $1,533,528
University Prep Inc. CO $1,360,730 $3,734,750

Voices College-Bound Language Academies CA $1,258,415 $2,699,999

Total:

$52,412,924 $126,773,527

**State reflects where the organization is based; school expansion sites funded under this grant may differ.

Credit Enhancement Grantees:

Grantee Name State** FY17 and Total Project Funding

Building Hope…A Charter Schools Facilities Fund DC $8,000,000
California School Finance Authority CA $8,000,000

Center for Community Self-Help NC $8,000,000

Charter Schools Development Corporation MD $5,000,000

Hope Enterprise Corporation MS $8,000,000

Low Income Investment Fund CA $8,000,000

Massachusetts Development Finance Agency MA $8,000,000

Raza Development Fund AZ $3,250,000

Total

$56,250,000
**State reflects where the organization is based; school expansion sites funded under this grant may differ.

Additional information regarding these grant programs and awards, including copies of grantee applications, may be found at: https://innovation.ed.gov/what-we-do/charter-schools/

I hope we won’t hear from any of the “progressives” who agree with DeVos about charters. She knows exactly what she is doing. Funding schools to compete with and undermine community public schools.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Funding, Privatization, U.S. Department of Education

Jennifer Berkshire: The Frightening Long-Term Goal of Betsy DeVos: MUST-READ!

By dianeravitch
October 3, 2017 //
62

Jennifer Berkshire says that critics of Betsy DeVos and her family were wrong to write her off as a dummy. She has a long-term plan and is steadily moving towards it. Privatization of public schools is on her check list. Destruction of unions is on the list. Elimination of any restrictions on campaign cash is there. The long-term target is democracy. Not more of it. Elimination of it. Oligarchy.

Berkshire writes:

“If Betsy DeVos enjoys the occasional quaff of champagne on her private jet, the recent news that the Supreme Court is poised to deliver a knock-out blow to public sector unions presented a reason to celebrate. The announcement was made just hours before DeVos alit in Harvard Square last week, where she was the star attraction at a school choice conference. At Harvard’s Kennedy School, DeVos was met by one of the largest protests she has encountered to date: an all-ages demonstration vs just about everything Trump’s Secretary of Education has said and done during the past seven months. Inside, the event was tense, even hostile—another rocky outing in a tenure replete with them. Or at least that is the conventional wisdom.

“Turning red

“The latest Supreme Court case to take aim at the unions, Janus vs AFSCME Council 31, began two years ago with a suit filed by yet another right-wing billionaire: Illinois’ Bruce Rauner. While it is framed by conservatives as a case about individual rights and freedom, the aptly named “Janus” is about politics and power. Public sector unions, virtually the only ones left, provide the bank and the foot soldiers that get Democrats elected. At their best, they’ve spearheaded progressive causes that go far beyond the interests of their members. In Massachusetts, the teachers unions have been the driving force behind successful campaigns for a minimum wage hike, paid sick time for all workers, and are now pushing a tax on millionaires. The unions are also virtually the last organized defense of what’s left of our safety net—Social Security and Medicare; the right wants those next.

“Just days before DeVos appeared at Harvard, she was back in Michigan, taking what was essentially a victory lap. She exhorted the crowd at a conservative gathering on Mackinac Island to pat themselves on the back for the Mitten State’s having gone Republican in the 2016 Presidential election—the first time since 1988. “We in Michigan have a lot to be proud of, but nothing more than that,” DeVos said. The story of just how the DeVos’ pulled off the feat of turning Michigan red is long and ugly, involving mountains of cash, the steady erosion of representative democracy, and a decades-long effort to dismember the state’s once powerful teachers union: the Michigan Education Association.

“Michigan went right-to-work in 2012, ushered into the former cradle of industrial unionism via the DeVos’ trademark combo of political arm twisting and largesse. Another DeVos-inspired law made it illegal for employers, including school districts, to process union dues, while simultaneously making it easier for corporations to deduct PAC money from employee paychecks. This summer the DeVos’ succeeded in driving a final nail into the MEA’s coffin: the GOP-controlled legislature essentially eliminating pensions, among the last tangible benefits that teachers in Michigan receive from their unions. The union leaders I spoke to when I traveled through the state reporting on DeVos’ legacy were candid about the increasingly precarious state of their organizations. But far worse lies ahead. The demise of retirement benefits means that new teachers have little incentive to join the unions; the shrinking terrain of collective bargaining gives veteran teachers little reason to remain in them.”

Dark Money is winning. Betsy is its face. That’s why she always smiles, no matter how many protestors complain. She is pinning their wings in her scrapbook.

Democracy is in deep trouble.

Categories ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Dark Money, Democracy, Inequity, Injustice, Unions

Betsy’s Mentor Speaks Today

By dianeravitch
October 2, 2017 //
18

From Politico.

“JEB BUSH TO DISCUSS THE STATE OF EDUCATION: Former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush tonight will discuss the “State of Education” at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia. During a big education policy speech in December, he called for an “earthquake” when it comes to education policy and federal education funding. Bush, a close ally of DeVos, said, “This new administration and Congress have the real opportunity to bring wholesale disruption.” He called for an expansion of school choice and for Congress to “cut strings that come with federal education funding and let states innovate with those dollars.” The speech starts at 6:30 p.m. ET. Watch the livestream.”

https://constitutioncenter.org/experience/programs-initiatives/live/

Categories Betsy DeVos, Bush, Jeb, Disruption

New Study: Education Is Important, But It Is Not the Key to Economic and Social Mobility

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2017 //
20

Rachel M. Cohen writes in The Atlantic about a new study by Jesse Rothstein, showing that education is important but it is not the key to economic and social mobility.

She writes:

“A new working paper authored by the UC Berkeley economist Jesse Rothstein builds on that research, in part by zeroing in on one of those five factors: schools. The idea that school quality would be an important element for intergenerational mobility—essentially a child’s likelihood that they will one day outearn their parents—seems intuitive: Leaders regularly stress that the best way to rise up the income ladder is to go to school, where one can learn the skills they need to succeed in a competitive, global economy. “In the 21st century, the best anti-poverty program around is a world-class education,” Barack Obama declared in his 2010 State of the Union address. Improving “skills and schools” is a benchmark of Republican House Speaker Paul Ryan’s poverty-fighting agenda.

“Indeed, this bipartisan education-and-poverty consensus has guided research and political efforts for decades. Broadly speaking, the idea is that if more kids graduate from high school, and achieve higher scores on standardized tests, then more young people are likely to go to college, and, in turn, land jobs that can secure them spots in the middle class.

“Rothstein’s new work complicates this narrative. Using data from several national surveys, Rothstein sought to scrutinize Chetty’s team’s work—looking to further test their hypothesis that the quality of a child’s education has a significant impact on her ability to advance out of the social class into which she was born.

“Rothstein, however, found little evidence to support that premise. Instead, he found that differences in local labor markets—for example, how similar industries can vary across different communities—and marriage patterns, such as higher concentrations of single-parent households, seemed to make much more of a difference than school quality. He concludes that factors like higher minimum wages, the presence and strength of labor unions, and clear career pathways within local industries are likely to play more important roles in facilitating a poor child’s ability to rise up the economic ladder when they reach adulthood….

“Jose Vilson, a New York City math teacher, says educators have known for years that out-of-school factors like access to food and healthcare are usually bigger determinants for societal success than in-school factors. He adds that while he tries his best to adhere to his various professional duties and expectations, he also recognizes that “maybe not everyone agrees on what it means to be successful” in life….

“Rothstein is quick to say that his new findings do not mean that Americans should do away with investments in school improvement, or even that education is unrelated to improving opportunity. Certainly the more that people can read, write, compute, think, and innovate, the better off society and liberal democracy would be. “It will still be good for us if we can figure out how to educate people more and better,” he says. “It might help the labor market, our civic society, our culture.” But Americans should be more clear, he says, about why they are investing in school improvement. His research suggests that doing so in order to boost a child’s chances to outearn their parents is unlikely to be successful. According to Rothstein, education systems just don’t go very far in explaining the differences between high- and low-opportunity areas.”

Union membership is another factor that explains whether children can escape poverty. But unions are under siege, and that route has been nearly closed off by the joint efforts of ALEC, the Koch brothers, the Walton family, and other billionaires who want to pull the ladder up behind them and claim that school choice will solve the economic disparity that benefits them.

Categories ALEC, Betsy DeVos, Billionaires, Economy, Research, School Choice, Unions

Michigan: A Textbook Example of How NOT to Reform Schools

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2017 //
12

Martin Levine, writing in the Nonprofit Quarterly, explains that the example of Michigan is strong evidence that Betsy DeVos’ plans to impose choice will harm education.

Before launching a huge new initiative, it is important to have trials and see how things work out. That is why the Common Core failed. Its advocates were so eager to shove it into every state that they couldn’t take the time to see how it worked in reality, in real classrooms with real teachers and real students. They didn’t have time for feedback from practitioners. They had no idea how it would work out. And it blew up in their faces.

Martin Levine says look at Michigan if you want to know how school choice and characterizing works.

Michigan has allowed market forces to replace the planning and oversight roles for which government was traditionally responsible. Control of public education was moved from local school officials to a diverse statewide network that includes universities and community colleges alongside local school boards. A chartering organization can sanction and supervise schools anywhere in the state with no requirement that they understand or are committed to the community the school will serve.

This suggests that rather than plan for the needs of a community from a single, local perspective, Michigan wants the broader market to serve as the control rod. A school in the southeastern corner of the state serving a poor community of color can be chartered by an organization hundreds of miles away with little or no connection to the school’s home neighborhood. The motivation of a chartering organization can be the welfare of the children, or the three percent of per-pupil funding it will receive for its efforts.

The result has been an unbridled expansion of charters and a glutted marketplace:

Since 2002, K-12 student enrollment has dropped by 214,000 in Michigan, but the number of charter schools has doubled. In 2011, state lawmakers abolished the longstanding charter-school cap…So many new schools have opened in Detroit that there are an estimated 30,000 empty seats in the district.

Finding qualified teachers is difficult, as limited supply must stretch to cover too many classrooms. With open enrollment in force, scarce resources must be spent on marketing if a school expects to attract students and remain viable.

In Michigan, public education is a profit-making business. For-profit organizations can and do own and operate public schools, and for-profit businesses have grown to provide goods and services to the charter community. Eighty percent of Michigan’s charter schools are operated and managed by for-profit management organizations. Other for-profits facilitate the buying and selling of school property, finance school operations, and provide the array of goods and services a school needs, day to day. All of this business runs with little oversight, open to conflicts of interest and fraud. When these parasitic businesses fail, or privately-operated charter schools run into financial trouble, they close up shop and exit the marketplace. Their debts may remain a public responsibility to be repaid from taxes, and their students are on their own to find another school to attend.

Scott VanderWerp, who runs the public finance group at Oak Ridge Financial, told the Times how profitable the educational sector could be doing transactions that had little to do with educating children: Just buy some buildings “for a couple hundred thousand bucks, lease them to the school for a couple of years, and then sell them to the school for a few million.” Money meant to teach children is quietly converted into corporate earnings.

What are the results? Abysmal. If test scores are your goal, Michigan’s scores have plummeted. 70% of the charters in Michigan are among the lowest performing in the state. If growth is what you care about, Michigan is dead last.

Levine concludes:

We know enough to know that the market is not the magic bullet to deal with problems in traditional public schooling. Inadequate funding is nor improved by adding competition or funneling dollars to the profit bucket. Weak communities don’t get stronger because we distance schools from community. Change may be needed, but not the one the White House and its associated megadonors are pushing.

Common sense. But who cares about common sense these days? Who cares about evidence? Money rules, and money ruins. We are talking about the education of our children, not profits. Or we should be.

Michigan is Betsy DeVos’s petri dish. Michigan proves that her reforms have failed.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Common Core, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Michigan, Privatization

Betsy DeVos’ Favorite Study of Florida Vouchers is Full of Holes

By dianeravitch
October 1, 2017 //
6

Early in her tenure as Secretary of Education, Betsy DeVos admitted that she is not a “numbers person.” She is also not a research person. The research shows that none of her favorite reforms improve education. Bu that never deters her. When the U.S. Department of Education study of the D.C. voucher program showed that the students actually lost ground as compared to their public school peers, she didn’t care. Nonetheless, she did recently cite a study from the Urban Institute claiming that the Florida tax credit program (vouchers) produced higher enrollments in college.

William Mathis, research director of the National Education Policy Center and Vice-Chair of the Vermont Board of Education, took a closer look at the study and found that the study did not prove what she thinks it does and offers no support for vouchers because of the confounding variable of selection effects. Someone at the Department should explain to her what a “variable” is and what “selection effects” are.

Do Private Schools increase College Enrollments for Poor Children?

A Closer Look at the Urban Institute’s Florida Claims

William J. Mathis

A review of:

Chingos, Matthew M. and Kuehn, Daniel (September 2017). The Effects of Statewide Private School Choice on College Enrollment and Graduation; Evidence from the Florida Tax Credit Scholarship Program, Urban Institute. 52 pp.

The Urban Institute reports that low income students who attended a private school on a Florida tax credit scholarship (“neovouchers”), in pre-collegiate grades had higher percentage enrollments in community colleges than traditional public school students. Using language such as the “impact of” and “had substantial positive impacts,” the findings are presented as causal. This purported effect was not found by the study’s authors in four year institutions or in the awarding of degrees – just in matriculation to community colleges.

Nevertheless, for school choice advocates, this report was hailed as good news on the heels of recent negative statewide school voucher reports coming out of Louisiana, Indiana, DC and Ohio. While community colleges are non-selective, most would agree that increased community college attendance is a good thing.

That said, a closer look indicates there is less to this latest report than first meets the eye. The primary problem—selection effects—is obliquely acknowledged by the report’s authors but is far too critical to push to the background.

There are at least three important differences that likely exist between the voucher group and the non-voucher group.

• Motivation, Effort, and Seeking Out Education Options – The very act of opting to enroll in a private school signals a very significant difference between the groups. Such an action requires considerable effort on the part of parents and students in selecting, applying, and transporting the child to the private school. These private school parents demonstrate, almost by definition, a higher involvement in their child’s education. Logically, these families would also be more likely to seek out community college options.

• Finances – While the program is available only to less affluent families, private schools can charge an amount higher than the $6,000 maximum available through the neovoucher. (Currently, eligibility rules require that the student’s household income not exceed 260 percent of the federal poverty level). Parents who can arrange or pay these supplemental tuition and fees to attend a private school represent the upper economic end of this means-tested group.

• Admissions – Private schools can continue their usual admissions policies, which may exclude children with special needs or deny admission on the basis of other characteristics. We cannot know the specific differences this introduces between the treatment and comparison groups, but we can be reasonably certain that these differences exist.

The study is based on “matching” private school students with traditional public school students and then comparing the two groups. While a common technique in voucher research, troubles arise when trying to pair up each student with her doppelganger from the other camp. As the authors acknowledge, “the quality of any matching can vary” (p. 12). While the researchers did an admirable job of matching, the entire process runs the risk of leaving out very important and determinative missing variables, as described above.

The study’s regression analysis also attempts to control for differences among students. In theory, an absolutely inclusive model can “confirm” a theory, and thus the researcher can claim a causal effect. But that’s a slippery slope. Regression is simply multiple correlation – and despite many inferences in the report, that is not causation. This is particularly true in this case, where selection effects are so strong.

In summary, it is the selection effects that primarily limit the study. A reasonable interpretation of the data is simply that the difference between the groups in their enrollment rates at community college is primarily due to different characteristics of families and students. In any case, the claim of private schools causing higher community-college attendance rates—let alone high college attendance in general—is a reach too far.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Florida, National Education Policy Center, Research, Vouchers

Nancy Bailey on the DeVos Watch: Prepare to Fight for Special Education!

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2017 //
12

When Betsy DeVos was interviewed by the Senate Committee that was about to confirm her as Secretary of Education, she seemed never to have heard of the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act or anything connected to special education. Now that she has been Secretary for several months, Nancy Bailey is worried that she thinks IDEA is a burden and must be cut.

Watch her like a hawk watches his or her prey, she advises, because DeVos seems to want to deregulate special education and defund it.

Her conversation centers around “piled on regulations” in special education. Instead of paying for services, she wants to deregulate, thereby allowing for funding cuts.

This would also destroy IDEA and leave children with disabilities to fend for themselves. It’s stepping backwards to the time when children with disabilities had no rights.

What DeVos Deregulations Mean to Special Education

Policymakers should look at regulations, especially having to do with the enormous amount of paperwork and high-stakes test administration facing general and special education teachers.

But this is not what Betsy is talking about.

Her deregulations will open the door to privatization.

Currently, parents lose their child’s protections under IDEA if they accept voucher money. This makes parents pause when considering a voucher. Betsy DeVos wants to lessen requirements of those protections to push her loosey goosey choice plan.

By killing regulations, Nancy fears, DeVos is setting up special education to be killed.

Be alert. Compassion and responsibility for others are not her strong suits.

Categories Betsy DeVos, Special Education

The Religious Rationale for Betsy DeVos’ Plan to Destroy Public Schools

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2017 //
31

In this article, journalist Kathi Valeii interviews author Katherine Stewart about the Evangelical attack on public schools. Stewart is the author of a powerful book, “The Good News Club: The Christian Right’s Stealth Assault on America’s Children.”

Stewart has shown how Evangelicals insert the “Good News Clubs” into public schools to proselytize.

Here is a quote from the interview:

“KV: In your book, you use the word “Christian Nationalist” to describe the people working to infiltrate the public school system with conversion-style programs. In the current political climate, this language feels particularly relevant. Why do you think this language choice is important?

“KS: Christian nationalism has been around for a couple centuries. But starting in the 1970s it took on a new and much more virulent form. Many people saw it coming. I think of Michelle Goldberg’s 2006, Kingdom Coming: The Rise of Christian Nationalism, a prescient look at the development of politicized evangelical religion. Other writers before her, such as Frederick Clarkson, who wrote Eternal Hostility: The Struggle Between Theocracy and Democracy, have been on the case even longer.

“But many others have until recently downplayed the rise of Christian Nationalism as merely a “cultural” phenomenon, or a manifestation of certain social attitudes. I believe that this is in part because the discussion of religion and politics is, frankly, awkward. It would be a much nicer world if we could simply allow one another to carry on in our personal beliefs and approach policy questions without regard to that private world.

“Today, however, a certain variety of politicized religion in America wants to rewrite our history, upend our constitutional principles, and take us “back” to a time that never actually existed. We can no longer afford to ignore it. With the rise of Trump, I think we can say definitively that Christian Nationalism is first and foremost a political ideology. It is deeply authoritarian, it is determined, and it has put the future of democracy in peril.

“When Christian Nationalists say they wish to “take our country back,” they are not being hyperbolic; they are being honest. They have told us that they abhor our public schools, and that they pray for the day such schools cease to exist. Leaders of Christian Nationalists’ judicial strategy have told us that they want to eradicate the “so-called’ wall of separation between church and state, and that the time has come to return our schools to the Lord. They are telling us what they really think, and we should listen to them now, before it is too late.

“KV: The last chapter of your book is titled, “If you can’t own it break it.” You explain the paradox of of the Christian Right’s desires to be actively involved in the public schools and simultaneously dismantle them, which basically also sums up the position of Education Secretary Betsy Devos. How do you see her leadership role affecting the further erosion of the practical separation of church and state in our public schools?

“KS: Betsy DeVos has historically funded two things with equal generosity: the religious right on the one hand, and the privatization efforts of public education on the other. The reason for that is straightforward: she, like many members of the extreme end of the conservative movement, believes in both economic libertarianism and religious fundamentalism, and she sees them as being grounded in each other and mutually reinforcing. The idea is that if you turn schools over to to the genuinely “free market,” they will inculcate the “correct” religious values in students. And there won’t be a need to worry about the separation of church and state, because they will be the same thing.

“The astonishing thing about DeVos is just how much contempt she exudes for the public schools that she is charged with overseeing. When Trump insulted “our failing government schools,” you can be sure that the sentiment chimed with her own beliefs. She rarely loses an opportunity to say that the system isn’t working, that the schools are failing, that they are losing ground, and so on. She seems to make a point of minimizing contact with the people most closely connected with traditional public schools. On a recent visit to Florida, she was criticized for visiting a private school, a charter school, and a voucher school, but no traditional public schools. This attitude is a clear prelude to destructive policy moves.”

Categories Betsy DeVos, Religion

Peter Greene to Betsy DeVos: Schools Are Not Like Food Trucks

By dianeravitch
September 30, 2017 //
18

Betsy DeVos keeps searching for an analogy that will convert non-believers to her love of school choice.

Choosing a school is like choosing Uber. Or a cellphone. Or anything.

At her Harvard address, she compared schools to making a choice between a restaurant and a food truck. Do you think Billionaire Betsy buys lunch from a food truck? I will donate $300 to the campaign of Mark Weber’s (blogger-teacher Jersey Jazzman) wife, Linda, who is running for Congress in New Jersey, to the first person who can produce a photo of Betsy DeVos buying lunch from a food truck in front of the ED in D.C. Linda is trying to flip a Republican seat to Democratic. She will be a friend and ally to public education.

Peter Greene explains that schools are NOT food trucks.

“Note that DeVos continues to drift further and further away from any interest in accountability for quality– in this analogy we pick the choice that tastes good, and if it happens to be unhealthy or toxic or laced with fried dog meat, none of that matters. Taste is not a bad guide for matters of food, but with schools, what “tastes good” today is not necessarily what will best serve the student, the family, the community and the nation over the coming decades. “Tastes good this moment” and “provides a solid education for a lifetime” are two entirely different metrics

“Like every other commercial enterprise, the food trucks of DC are not geared to handle all customers. There are many reasons that comparing schools to businesses is a huge fail, but this is one of the hugest– there is no business sector in this country built on the idea of serving every single person in the country. Each food truck operates on the idea that some people will eat there and other people won’t, and as long as enough people eat there, the food truck is good. But if there are people who don’t eat at any of the food trucks, some people who don’t eat at all– well, that is not the food truck operators problem.

“And as a customer, you can’t get whatever you want– you can only get what the trucks are serving.

“The modern charter industry is a business model, and just like any other business model, it is built on serving some customers. Making sure that every student in America gets a good education is not the goal, the purpose or even the concern of the charter industry. But it has to be the concern of a public school system.

“Schools are not businesses. Students are not customers. And education is not a side of fries.”

Find another analogy, Betsy.

Categories Accountability, Betsy DeVos, Charter Schools, Corporate Reformers, Education Industry, Privatization, School Choice
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